


Green Retrievers and their Frisbees

by Terminallydepraved



Series: Works for Others [28]
Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes
Genre: Fluff and Humor, M/M, Mistletoe, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 07:35:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13209000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terminallydepraved/pseuds/Terminallydepraved
Summary: It's three days past Christmas and the mistletoe is still up, AKA why Clint Barton is having a really wild day.





	Green Retrievers and their Frisbees

**Author's Note:**

> lol never written this pairing before but it was a wild time! i hope yall like it, cuz rachel (the one who is responsible for sponsering this fic) sure as shit did. Enjoy!

Clint awoke luxuriously in what had to be the most comfortable vent in Stark Tower. Or, well, the most comfortable one he had tried napping in so far. The tower was large, there were a lot of vents– Clint yawned, stretching in the mismatched collection of bedding and clothing he’d stolen to make his latest nest. At some point he’d make his way around them all, and then he’d be able to update his nifty little yelp review on which were the best for napping, snooping, and hiding. 

Stark was sure to love that, he thought, rolling onto his shoulder to fumble for his phone. But really, if the man didn’t want Clint in his vents, he really shouldn’t have made them so damn cozy. 

His eyes smarted when he managed to find his phone and check the time. It was only late afternoon, and with the holidays still in full swing, Clint had nowhere to be and nothing to do but nap the hours away and stuff himself full of all the tasty food the tower had to offer. Speaking of which, he was drastically low on snacks. A quick swivel of his phone flashlight showed his food stores to be nearly gone, and wasn’t that a sobering thought? 

Clint sighed, letting his phone fall back to his side. His stomach growled. It wouldn’t take long to crawl around the vent system to the kitchens, but god, the effort. He threw his hand over his forehead at the very thought, overwhelmed by the tiring reality of movement. 

“My life is so hard,” he sighed to no one in particular. 

His eyes widened in the darkness when something answered him. 

_ Thud. Thud.  _ There came a crash somewhere far off, and then another a little closer. Another experiment gone belly up in Stark’s face? It was likely, but the workshop was floors below where Clint was now.

He startled when a new sound started up significantly closer. What was that odd… Was it crunching? Or more like a pounding sound? Clint carefully maneuvered himself up, ear cocked as he listened. It was definitely getting closer… In fact, he could nearly feel it beneath him–

Clint had just enough time to let out a startled shriek as a large, green hand burst through the bottom of the vent and seized him by the thigh, yanking him bodily from the ceiling. The dust of drywall covered him, clinging to his sunglasses to the point of blindness. “What the  _ fuck _ is going on?!” he yelped, voice a few octaves higher than it had any right to be. Whatever it was holding him was dangling him by his leg, and it wasn’t until his glasses fell to the floor that he realized he was just a victim of friendly fire. 

Clint felt the stomach-churning sensation of being turned in mid-air, and coming from an acrobat and vent-crawler, he probably wasn’t as surprised by it as he could have been. Though, looking at at the massive green hands wrapped around his waist, he supposed his threshold for the weird was drastically different than most people. He only had a moment to wonder how exactly his life came to this exact moment. The Hulk turned him around like a rag doll, putting their faces only an inch apart. 

Clint smiled at the scowl dominating his vision. The massive, green scowl. “‘Sup, Jade Jaws,” he greeted slowly, meeting Hulk’s equally green eyes. “You mind tellin’ me why the hell you punched through the ceiling to drag me out into the light?”

He wasn’t sure if he should be glad that the Hulk was grinning at him now. “Cupid all dusty,” he said just a hair too loud at this close a distance to do any favors to Clint’s already shite hearing. The hand not holding him in the air came up to pat roughly at Clint’s shoulders, battering the dust from his clothes but leaving probable bruises behind. 

“Yeah, yeah, Cupid’s all dusty,” Clint muttered, shying away from the aggressive pats. “It’s  _ hilarious,  _ big guy. Now why am I all dusty? You could’ve had JARVIS buzz me or whatever it is he does when people need my bountiful insight.”

“It appears that once again your imbedded tracker collar has been misplaced, Mr. Barton,” JARVIS recited drolly from on high. “I shall have to alert Master Stark at once.”

“Yeah, you do that, Jeeves,” Clint called out to the ceiling, sticking out his tongue to the cameras no doubt planted in the walls.

Hulk shook him gently, bringing Clint’s attention back to him. “Hulk have question,” he said. “Hulk find Cupid to answer.”

Clint crossed his arms, thankful he could still manage that. If he couldn’t sass, he didn’t know what he might do. “What’s got your goat this time?” he asked. “Did someone get your big purple trunks in a twist again over mario cart? I told you already, Princess Peach is the way to go.”

The Hulk huffed out an unimpressed breath and pointed somewhere above their heads. Following the thick finger up, Clint swallowed when he saw what it was confusing the jolly green giant. “Oh,” he said dumbly. “That’s not supposed to still be up there.” 

“What is it.”

Clint’s smirk twitched as a current of air stirred the innocuous green and white plant still hanging from the goddamn ceiling. Someone’s idea of a joke? It had to be Stark’s, right? No one else was cynical enough about the holidays to subject his friends and coworkers to something like mistletoe, and Clint was at least thirty-six percent certain that Fury wouldn’t have put up with this HR travesty-in-the-making. 

“Well, big guy,” he began, chewing the words before he set them free. “That would be mistletoe, and the most colossal clusterfuck this holiday season has to offer a person. It’s a Christmas thing.”

Hulk’s brow furrowed. He cocked his head curiously, lifting Clint higher as he went up on his toes to get a closer look. The tips of the mistletoe just barely tickled Hulk’s nose, nearly prompting him to sneeze. “Christmas over,” he said plainly, giving Clint a distrusting look. “Why it still there.”

Why indeed. “Stark’s still got the trees up in the foyers, buddy,” he tried, kicking his legs a little when he wasn’t put back on the ground. “He probably didn’t notice that time passes when he’s in his workshop.”

The snort of laugh that earned him ruffled his hair. He smiled at Clint, and it was a pretty good smile. Big, lopsided, kinda the sort of smile you’d imagine a particularly pleasant golden retriever to give after catching a frisbee. But, you know, green. A green retriever–

Oh, god. Clint was the frisbee, wasn’t he? He promptly stopped thinking about metaphors.

“Is that all you needed me for?” Clint asked, voice a little strained, sanity a lot of strained. 

Hulk’s smile fell, his brow knitting together instead. “No,” he said a bit tersely, holding Clint tighter when he tried to squirm. “Why it there.”

“I just told you–”

Clint’s teeth clacked together painfully as the Hulk shook him quiet. “No!” he said a little too loud. He held Clint higher, nose to nose with the offending piece of holiday greenery. “What it do.”

Oh. He didn’t know what it was for. Great. 

“Ah, well, buddy…” Wasn’t Banner a super-nerd? How could the Hulk not know what mistletoe was for? A better question might be why was it always Clint who got stuck explaining shit like this. It really wasn’t fair, in the cosmic grand scheme of things. Not fair at all, and really, Clint needed to have a talk with whoever’s sense of humor it was that got him stuck in situations like this. Probably Doom, honestly. Doom had enough money to make this Clint’s lot in life, and it would feel so good shooting an arrow into that pompous tin can’s ass–

“Hulk break Cupid?” the Hulk wondered, shaking Clint from his murderous thoughts. “Cupid so fragile. Break like tiny doll.”

“I’m not broken!” Clint grunted, smacking at the Hulk’s fingers until he stopped shaking him. “But I’m gonna puke all over you if you don’t stop spinnin’ me like a teacup ride!”

Hulk raised a thick, impressive brow. “Cupid ride teacups?” He scoffed, smirking like the asshole he was. “Cupid really is tiny.”

Clint really wished he had a mouth as big as Hulk’s if only so he could scowl in high definition. He made do with what he had though, and all it earned him was a booming laugh that rattled the walls and sent another cascade of dust down on them from the gaping hole in the ceiling. 

“You kiss under it, alright!” Clint yelled, too fed up with dangling to be patient. “Mistletoe, its dumb tradition, if you catch someone under it you’re supposed to kiss. Now put me down!”

The laughter stopped instantly. The Hulk looked at him critically as if he might be lying to him. “What kind of dumb tradition is that,” he muttered, glaring up at the mistletoe as if it didn’t make any sense at all. “What if person ugly. What if person smelly.”

Clint threw up his hands, shrugging. “That’s the fun of it I guess,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Or what Stark finds fun about it. Sounds more like an HR fiasco waiting to happen, but I guess if you’ve got enough money to put a goddamn solid gold Iron Man themed Christmas tree on every floor of your massive, euphemistic tower, then why the fuck not, right buddy?”

The Hulk wasn’t listening to him anymore, which was just as well because after a certain point in a rant, Clint really didn’t have much worth hearing anyway. He just stared at the mistletoe and then looked back at Clint, and then back at the mistletoe. 

“What if person is Hulk.”

Clint blinked.

“What about if its you?” he asked, propping his elbow on the Hulk’s index finger so he could rest his head on his hand. “Just ‘cause you’re you doesn’t mean you’re excused from these sorts of holiday themed tortures.”

The Hulk glowered. “What if person not like Hulk,” he repeated, showing his teeth a little. “Who want to kiss Hulk?”

Well, not that Clint was going to say it outloud, but a simple internet search would show Hulk just how many people would get on that if it was presented before them. Clint cleared his throat, cheeks flushing a little, and coughed for good measure. “Come on, buddy, there are plenty–”

He didn’t even get to finish, which was just his luck really. All he had time to process was a whole lot of green before he found himself choking on his words and sputtering against lips that weren’t his own. 

Okay. Clint was… kissing the Hulk. Or. Wait. The Hulk was kissing him? Did it really matter at this point? What the hell were semantics when locking lips with a hulking green radiation man? Clint’s mind stuttered to find traction when there really was none to find, another thing he could chalk up to Doom for no doubt, and that asshole better just  _ wait  _ for Clint to sharpen his arrows because this? This was a travesty. 

Not the kissing, Clint rushed to amend, his mind a mess but everywhere else faring no better. The kiss was… surprisingly nice? Clint had done a lot of kissing in his day, because, come on? Look at him. Prime example of a kissable face right there. And this? This was nice. It was odd, sure, a little messy, maybe, but pretty good all things considered, and well, Clint would be the first to admit he was doing a hell of a lot of considering right now when he probably should be more focused on what the fuck was going down in the general vicinity of his face.

I.E. the Hulk kissing him. Under the goddamn mistletoe no less. 

Christ, what even was Clint’s life anymore?

The Hulk’s lips stilled and pulled away, and when Clint managed to open his eyes, he opened them to another scowl. “Cupid thinks too much,” he murmured, or what passed for a murmur when you were big and green and your concept of an inside voice could still shatter glass. 

“I promise you that has never been said about me in my life,” Clint wheezed, his voice cracking a couple times just because this was his fucking life. Because the Hulk was one hell of a good kisser and Clint was a little touch starved. “Why don’t we both stop thinking and get back to kissing? Cause that was kinda nice.”

Oh, god. Wrong thing to say. The Hulk was big in most places, but his ego? Yeah, Clint didn’t need to be making that any bigger. The smirk on the guy’s face said he had, though. He had made it so much bigger, and now it was going to crush Clint into street pizza with its size.

“But Christmas over,” the Hulk said, teasing like the bastard he truly was. 

“For the love of God and Cap’s star spangled ass, come here!” And Clint did the only thing he could do; he grabbed the Hulk by his big, green ears, and dragged him down for another kiss. Another really, really good fucking kiss. Good enough that he could pretend he really did drag Hulk closer instead of the Hulk letting him, which he had, just for another chance to hear Clint’s brain melt like an ice pop, which it did. 

Clint hung there, dumb as a doornail, and grinned against the big, green lips kissing him stupid.  

Maybe he could keep that mistletoe there a little while longer, he figured, closing his eyes for another kiss. Just until Stark came to his senses, because as far as Clint was concerned? He’d lost his own already, and that was just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> wooot i had a lot of fun with this one. if youre interested in more of my work, check me out on tumblr for my fandom works (terminallydepraved) and my original published work (tdcloud). thank you rach for letting me make this fic for you! please leave comments, and as always, until next time~


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